Here’s a nice little film by four young college students originally made in 2003 as coursework, retracing several of the iconic locations from classic grim British crime thriller, Get Carter. The lads (Ashley Dean , Gary Edge, Tom Whyman, and Andy Clegg) take us to such spots as:

. The Las Vegas Boarding House, where Carter (Michael Caine) strides out the front door, bollock naked with a shotgun, startling the old lady next door (her reaction was genuine);

. St. Cuthbert’s tower block, where Glenda’s flat is, and Carter discovers his niece has been appearing in porno flicks with her;

. The High Level (or Iron) Bridge, where Carter is chased by two thugs sent up from London to fetch him back there;

. Drydale Hall, the country home of villain Cyril Kinnear (playwright John Osborne);

Much has changed in Newcastle beyond recognition from 1971 when Get Carter was filmed. Most notably, the car park was demolished in 2010. The canny council offered pieces of rubble to souvenir hunters at £5.00 a pop. Director Mike Hodges told The Guardian in 2011, on looking for locations:

“I came across Newcastle, which I’d never been to before. And as soon as I saw it, I knew that’s where I wanted to shoot. It was such an incredibly visual city. It didn’t look like a British city. It looked like Chicago or New York.

There were those extraordinary bridges and, of course, the other element was the huge ships, which were a kind of architecture in themselves. The river was just amazing: hard, and rusty. And with all the houses that ended up in the film, you felt you could begin to understand why someone as psychotic as Jack Carter had ended up the way he was.”

As a little bonus, here’s the author of Jack’s Return Home, Ted Lewis, on location in 1971: